Big Mouth: 24 hour pointy people

Future is AOP PPA Digital Publisher of the Year and BMA Media Company of the Year. Creative Bloq is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. We produce content across five core areas: Technology TechRadar T3 Mac|Life Gizmodo UK More… Entertainment CVG PC Gamer GamesRadar Total Film More… Music MusicRadar Guitarist […]

Speeding up mobile HTML5 experiences

Multiple platforms, browsers, web app platforms, experimental features and unreliable wireless networks: the mobile web world is a far more complex environment than the typical web world that we were used to for years. Performance on mobile is such an important issue. Because of unreliable networks, radio packet latencies, smaller screens and battery limits, users […]

Instantly preview web fonts on live sites

Future is AOP PPA Digital Publisher of the Year and BMA Media Company of the Year. Creative Bloq is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. We produce content across five core areas: Technology TechRadar T3 Mac|Life Gizmodo UK More… Entertainment CVG PC Gamer GamesRadar Total Film More… Music MusicRadar Guitarist […]

Stephanie Troeth on trusting gut instincts

Stephanie Troeth’s main job title is subtly different from the terms we usually hear within the field of user experience. She’s a user experience strategist, a discipline that “has yet to hit mainstream”, she tells me, which involves working in the place where user experience and business objectives meet. I ask her how she describes […]

Quick and dirty usability testing

This is an edited excerpt from Chapter 8 of The User Experience Team of One – A Research and Design Survival Guide, published by Rosenfeld Media. Use the discount code NETMAGUXT to get 20 per cent off your purchase Can people use this product as intended? The essence of the quick-and-dirty usability test is that […]

5 brilliant microsites

Future is AOP PPA Digital Publisher of the Year and BMA Media Company of the Year. Creative Bloq is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. We produce content across five core areas: Technology TechRadar T3 Mac|Life Gizmodo UK More… Entertainment CVG PC Gamer GamesRadar Total Film More… Music MusicRadar Guitarist […]

Clare Sutcliffe on teaching kids to code

Future is AOP and PPA Consumer Digital Publisher of the Year. This site is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. We produce content across five core areas: Technology TechRadar T3 MacLife Gizmodo UK More… Entertainment CVG PC Gamer GamesRadar Total Film More… Music Classic Rock MusicRadar Guitarist Metal Hammer More… […]

On critical JS and progressive enhancement

“It’s time to consider that JavaScript can be used as a critical component of any web app. Progressive enhancement slows down evolution.” I recently tweeted this bold statement, and, unsurprisingly, one of the answers I received mentioned the risks inherent in such a philosophy and advised me to favor a “progressive enhancement” approach. It is […]

Accessibility through video captions

Video captions are important for accessibility and search engines. Edit YouTube captions to prevent bloopers, says Alastair Campbell I turned on captions for my account on YouTube a while ago when testing something, and forgot to turn them off. Then I realised that almost every YouTube video has captions, whether the owner knew about them […]

Kim Goodwin on designing culture

This article first appeared in issue 242 of .net magazine – the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. One company is known for its fabulous design. The other is known for its frustrating products. Both have terrific design teams, so how can this be? The answer pretty much always comes down to culture. […]

Heffalumps and user experience

Piglet, I have decided something You’re Pooh. Christoper Robin is anyone with some half-baked idea. The Heffalump is your customer. Don’t let Christopher Robin trick you. “I saw a Heffalump today, Piglet.” He said carelessly. Piglet says he’s seen one and so does Pooh, both undoubtedly lying. Pooh later looks round to see that nobody […]

Make HTML5 apps with Sencha, part two

In the final part of this tutorial, Sencha’s Daniel Gallo discusses mobile app development and how to connect a mobile HTML5 app to an ASP.NET Web API backend This article first appeared in issue 236 of .net magazine – the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. When deciding how to create a mobile […]

Five killer ways to use minimalism

Future is AOP and PPA Consumer Digital Publisher of the Year. This site is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. We produce content across five core areas: Technology TechRadar T3 MacLife Gizmodo UK More… Entertainment CVG PC Gamer GamesRadar Total Film More… Music Classic Rock MusicRadar Guitarist Metal Hammer More… […]

5 reasons why the web tracking debate matters

Mozilla’s announcement that the next version of Firefox will block third party cookies by default has sparked debate across the internet around online tracking. The spectrum of opinion on tracking ranges from the IAB’s stance (tracking promotes freedom of choice and supports small business), to calling out the internet as a “surveillance state”. Personalisation can […]

Big question: how do you stay inspired and beat the block?

Dan Rubin Designer sidebarcreative.com I have two main way I use right now, to varying degrees of success. First, I try to get as far away from whatever it is I’m stuck on, whether that means topically or physically. This can mean going out for a walk (easy to do, clears the head), especially with […]

Content strategy 101, Part 2: making data meaningful

In the second of a four-part series, Sandi Wassmer looks at bridging the gap from data to meaningful information This article first appeared in issue 235 of .net magazine – the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Content’s purpose is to convey information. But its form is data, which is why information architecture […]

Dave Shea on the return of CSS Zen Garden

.net: We’re happy to see CSS Zen Garden return, but why did it go on hiatus in the first place? DS: Well, I’ve had proposals over the years for a CSS Zen Garden for ‘X’. That ‘X’ has come in the form of many things: CMS; mobile; and front-end languages of choice. By far the […]

It’s all about the context

In the near future everything we design must be hooked to context, says Joe Johnston This article first appeared in issue 236 of .net magazine – the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Until recently, advertisers have understood one thing better than web and app designers: context. Advertisers have had to be context-sensitive […]

The web needs fewer doorslams and more personality

Doorslams: no! More personality: yes! Around a year ago, experience designer Aral Balkan complained about doorslams—modal messages that interrupt user flow, to ask them to download your app. We recently wrote about how devs are increasingly rallying against such anti-patterns. Mobile enthusiast Terence Eden has gone further than most, with Tumblr blog I Don’t Want […]

Migrating the Magento 2 test suite to Magento

Tim Wagner describes how to perform the migration and demonstrates the suite’s potential for integration into a build and deployment process One of the biggest weaknesses of Magento – if it’s possible to talk about weaknesses at all compared to other shop systems – is undoubtedly its lack of a PHPUnit test suite similar to […]